Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/161

 active mental state is conducive to digestion. There is nothing done in the stomach in a physical way that is not done in the mind in a mental way. The function of the lungs is like that of the stomach. They select homogeneous materials from the air and excrete the heterogeneous, as the stomach does with its food. The lungs derive the power of separating the homogeneous from the heterogeneous, and of appropriating the useful, from affection's power of perceiving and appropriating the agreeable and of rejecting the disagreeable. The mental power, soul power, or spiritual power is turned by the bodily organism into a corresponding physical one by the activity of a higher degree being communicated to a next lower discrete degree as endeavor, which endeavor continues action according to the receiving form. The same is true of the kidneys, liver, and every organ of the body. Because affection proceeds from and is vitalized by the Divine Human, there is in affection, which is the life of the man and of the body, every potency; so that only the organism is needed to bring out any specific power. That affection is able to operate the body in all its functions, considering the high quality of affection's substance and the superior mechanism of the body, is no more marvellous or difficult to conceive than